Читать книгу The Pearler’s Wife: A gripping historical novel of forbidden love, family secrets and a lost moment in history - Roxane Dhand, Roxane Dhand - Страница 10

THE NEXT MORNING, SHE was startled awake by the smash and splintering of crockery. She lay absolutely still, rigid, her eyes wide, waiting with panic for the door to burst open and Maitland to appear, demanding his husband’s dues.

‘Knock, knock.’ The voice was unfamiliar, certainly not Maitland’s.

She was too scared to sit up, and so sank down dragging the sheets to her chin, her pulse jumping in her throat.

A Chinese man with a coffee-coloured face, his teeth shining even whiter than the dazzling singlet he wore below it, peered round her door. His gums looked blue against the shiny white enamel. Maisie twisted the gaping neckline of her nightgown closed between her thumb and forefinger.

Pinned to the bed by his enquiring gaze, she pulled the sheets more tightly around her. ‘Who are you?’

A half-smile hovered at his mouth. ‘Cook-houseboy, Mem. I everything here.’

‘Do you live in this house?’ She shrank back against the pillow, her stomach contracting. Maitland hadn’t mentioned servants, though she had realised there must be some. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Duc, Mem.’

‘What do you want?’ She tightened the sheet round her neck.

‘Bossman say me bring you cuppa tea.’

She willed herself calm. ‘That would be welcome.’

‘You okey-dokey, Mem?’

She dipped her chin. ‘Is Captain Sinclair here, Duc?’

‘Boss? No, he gone working. He come back afternoon or night time. Maybe if.’

She sat up from the pillows and elbowed her way up the headboard. ‘Maybe if?’

‘Seven o’clock. Maybe if eight.’ He seemed to nod and shake his head at the same time, leaving Maisie with no idea what he meant.

‘What time is it?’

He gave her a look, which made her feel stupid. ‘’Bout morning-tea time.’

‘Has my trunk arrived from the steamer?’

He put his head on one side and wobbled it again, grinning like a madman. She could see he hadn’t understood her question.

‘Big black box.’ She drew a rectangle in the air with both hands.

Duc pulled his mouth wide. ‘Yes. Him arrived. I bring for you?’

‘Tea first. Then you can move the black box.’

The mouth widened. ‘You get up and go verandah. I bring tea. You want eat?’

She couldn’t remember when she’d last eaten. ‘Maybe something small?’

‘I go see what’s what.’ He put his hands together and bowed.

She half-expected him to reverse out of the room. For the first time in days, she almost smiled.

Duc carried the tea tray as if he were carrying the crown jewels on a velvet cushion, his arms stretched out and reverent. When he saw her, his face lit up. He dropped the tray on a side table and bent at the waist, paying homage as if she were a minor royal. Clay tea things and a plate of scones rattled together, sloshing sugar and milk onto the tray cloth. Maisie wondered about him, supposing the smashed crockery that had woken her had been his handiwork. She picked up a sugar-crusted cake and took a bite. It was as dry as the Sahara.

‘Is there any butter?’

‘No. Him butter come in tin. Very oily.’ He shook his head to one side.

‘Milk?’

‘Milk him cow gone.’

Maisie had trouble with this one. Did they have a cow that had gone away? Or died? Or did they have a milk source that had run out? She would have to try harder. ‘Jam, then?’

‘No, him all used up. Poof.’ Duc threw his hands in the air.

Maisie shifted in her seat.

Duc missed nothing. ‘You not comfy in boss fella’s house? You want I bring more something?’

‘I’m fine, thank you. Does the captain have a maid? A girl who comes in to help you?’

‘Oh no, Mem. No girls.’

Maisie looked at him. ‘No girls?’

‘No. Just him and me here, Mem.’

Maisie drank her pot of tea and washed down the rock-hard scones, which were stale enough to endanger teeth. She had only intended to eat one but had allowed herself to become distracted by her new surroundings. In the daylight she could see that the house was built on concrete legs, and from the shady west-facing verandah she looked down onto a stretch of sand alive with activity. The tide was out and it seemed as if an army of tea-coloured locusts was stripping the beached sailing boats of their contents. Coils of rope, baskets and lengths of anchor chain were being lugged up the sand. Sails were taken down from the riggings and dragged up the dunes where they were spread out for inspection across the high ground.

She shifted her gaze towards the lighthouse, which was as clean and bright as tooth powder. Next to it was a collection of iron sheds and warehouses. Two men were separate from the rest, deep in conversation. The shorter of the two was waving his arm at the task force on the beach. The other, she saw, was William Cooper – the tall English diver from the steamer – his dark head framed by the brilliant blue sky. Something tugged within her and she stared, her chest tightening as she took in the tilt of his head, the set of his shoulders. Even from this distance she could see that his skin was glossy with sweat. It glistened on his face like sunlight on water, and she could almost feel his body heat. She watched him twist off his boots and socks, and fold his trousers in neat pleats to the knee. He looked as if he was going to walk down to the water’s edge and paddle in the sea.

He patted his trouser pocket and pulled out the makings of a cigarette. The process made her frown. She knew she had seen him do it before but she couldn’t remember when.

Duc shuffled into view, his big toes straddling a Y-shaped strap on flat, slappy shoes. ‘You all done tea, Mem?’

Maisie tore her gaze from the figure on the foreshore and tried not to stare at Duc’s feet. She had never seen footwear like it. ‘Yes, thank you, Duc.’

She drained the last drop of lukewarm tea from her cup and rose from the chair. Her dress, the same dress she had worn for her marriage ceremony the day before, clung determinedly to her skin. She pulled at the neckline and flapped it up and down, trying to find some respite from the stifling heat.

‘Perhaps you could show me round the house?’

Duc beamed, his eyes sparking with what she thought was happiness.

Maitland’s bungalow – he had named it Turbine after a winning racehorse he had once backed – was a large oblong. Elaborate white fretwork surrounded wide latticed verandahs framing the house. The bungalow was set away from the acre-block housing she would learn was the ‘English’ part of town, and Maisie couldn’t help but wonder why he had built his house so far from the centre of things. At the front of the house, Turbine’s lush green lawns rolled out to the edge of a blood-red cliff that overlooked the ocean. They had no neighbours.

The bungalow was designed to be airy. Duc explained that the boss fella’s house had been built to follow the construction lines of a ship.

‘This housie builded by them Jap fellas.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Them Jappy fellas in Asia Place. Before him government say bye-bye to best workers.’ Maisie let his remark pass. She had been force-fed a diet of racist extremism since she boarded the steamship to Port Fremantle almost two months ago and was still struggling to digest the bigotry.

‘Mem Tuan. You listen?’

‘Yes. I’m listening. Tuan?’

‘Means boss. Them Jappy fellas build things good and use same wood for lugger boat. So him deck become verandah, inside boat is inside bit of house and sails on boat is big blow shutters.’

Duc was speaking a language she couldn’t comprehend, and she found herself mirroring his expression, stretching her mouth wide in a mirthless grin till her jaw ached with effort. She waved at steel cables that crossed over the roof like rigid string, anchored to the ground by fastenings sunk deep into cement.

‘Is for big-blow windies, Mem. Keep house on spot.’

She pointed at the metal-capped cement pillars beyond the verandah.

‘Hims is for creepy-crawlies and snakes and eaty ants.’

‘You eat ants?’

Duc rolled his eyes. ‘No eaty ants, theys eaty house. We no eat-im.’ As they continued the tour of the house she pointed, he explained, and neither comprehended the other. She thought that the house perfectly reflected her husband: flat and stretched sideways rather than up.

The dining room was next to the kitchen at one end of the west verandah. The walls were covered with framed pictures of hunting scenes – slaughtered deer, tigers and elephants immortalised in their final moments. Huntsmen and hounds posing by their bleeding quarry. She imagined she could hear the call of hunting horns, and tried not to look.

At right angles, the verandah widened to accommodate the lounge furniture, which, Duc explained, was made of cane imported from Singapore. At the far end of the same verandah was a long, partitioned space.

‘This, Mem,’ Duc paused, waving his arms like a policeman, ‘is mosquito room. Where you and boss have sleep. Afternoon time.’

Maisie steadied herself on the back of a chair. So, this is when it would happen. The consummation of her marriage would be this afternoon – in the mosquito room – with Duc listening in.

Duc explained that the quasi-dormitory area was enclosed by fine steel mesh to keep out the biting insects. Full-length iron shutters protected the space from the elements.

‘And do you have a room in the house, Duc?’

‘I’s live at back near to boss fella’s room.’

Maisie was shown a further small verandah at the back of the bungalow that faced the garden, which Duc told her was his space, or words to that effect. At the back was also a small shuttered area the boss used as a second home-based office, and a large storeroom, which housed an impressive larder of canned food.

‘The three of us will be totally self-sufficient if the sky falls in!’ She laughed.

Duc looked at her with a broad grin, his eyes wide with hope.

‘What you say you teach me cook, Mem, so we okey-dokey when sky falls in?’